Where Olgo's Fighting for the Workers This Time

COLD RISING: A Cold Rush Novella by Rohan O'Duill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a smart, brisk novel set in a realistic but gritty future, most of it taking place deep in the mines and awkward workplaces of Mars. It's dark in bits but not too dark. I liked it.

Olgo and his fellow agents are fixers for a giant corporation out of Geneva, and though they have leave to be brutal (and even have their emotions suppressed because of the pain of some unspecified trauma), Olgo is still compassionate and sympathetic. As direct representatives of the company's owners, they (Olgo and his assistants) travel to Mars to oversee compliance with worker protections--something that is clearly not being taken seriously to that point.

The story of twelve-year-old Suong, a worker in a deep pit of Mars, shows the horrors of life for millions of people. The conditions reminded me of workers in Red Rising or The Expanse, though the world-building is unique and rolled out to the reader in a nicely organic way. (There are some resemblances to Murderbot as well, in both story elements and reading time.) The arrival of Olgo and the other agents gives people hope, igniting a storm of demonstrations by the workers and violence in response. Suong survives a riot, and along with Olgo has to find a way to fight back against the uncooperative companies on Mars.

The story reads briskly with good pace from the start, though I found the action and plot of the second half the most engaging. The author does a good job of keeping it human, especially with the evolution of Olgo as a person. The value of individuals specifically and humanity in general is a nice theme worked throughout the story, and it makes a bright contrast to the darkness of the setting.

I enjoyed the novella and look forward to other stories by the author.

(I received an ARC of the novella in return for an honest review.)

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Where It's Really Dark. Really.

Threads of Malice by Tamara Siler Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my cuppa.

Much of this is entertaining, and it is well written, but it's just too dark. It's like a particularly chilling "Criminal Minds" episode, except in a fantasy setting. I kept going to see the bad guys captured, but the evil and the horror and the bad things happening to good people all continue up to the very last page. And I was fricking done by that time.

Honestly, I almost stopped 20 pages from the end. It was excruciating. Murder. Rape. Torture. Children in distress.

I should have DNFed early on, but I kinda liked the first book in the series, and I wanted to know what happened. However, nah... this is just too dark for me.

One thing I don't get--the main character sees the ghosts of the murderer's victims, but their presence adds almost nothing to the plot. He only sees them; there's no communication of any kind. No significant clues, beyond the mere fact of their existence. They might as well be invisible balloons trailing him around. Seems like a missed opportunity.

Anyway, it's probably a better book to other readers. If you like horror or bloody stories of sadistic murderers being tracked down and brought to justice, you'll be fine. Go for it.

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